Friday, February 6, 2015

Reporters aren't doing their jobs reporting on sexual assault, declares a sexual assault victims' advocate, and she, for one, "would like to see . . . a discussion about the role of a reporter in the broader scheme” of sexual assault.

For one thing, she wants reporters to curtail their use of the words “alleged” and “alleges” when reporting on rape allegations because these words imply that a rape allegation is . . . a . . . rape allegation.

Get it? Neither do I.

Such words are part of the culture of blaming and shaming "survivors," she suggests. Of course, this assumes that rape accusers are "survivors," and it's that assumption that she seems to want reporters to convey. Words like "alleged," she clucks, affect "the survivor’s credibility" and "might imply that she’s lying.”

But of course the word "alleged" does not imply that the woman is lying--it merely states the woman alleges she was raped. To say more than that -- to say that a woman was raped without the "alleged" -- does a disservice to the reader because that assertion may not be true.

Worse, when a journalist, who presumably investigates the stories she writes about, declares that a rape actually occurred even though the reporter can't possibly know that, it works a terrible injustice on the man or boy accused of the rape. But fairness to the accused doesn't seem at all important to the sexual grievance industry.

She also wants reporters to avoid using words like “caress,” “fondle” and “touch," presumably even if the accuser was “caressed,” “fondled” or “touched." She tells reporters not to hammer home when physical injuries are limited, presumably even when physical injuries were limited.

This advice is not unusual. The sexual grievance industry actually has a website to teach journalists how to report on rape in a feminist-friendly manner.

The problem with the news media when it comes to rape reporting isn't that it "blames and shames" rape accusers The problem with the news media is that, too often, it rushes to judgment and declares rape accusers to be "victims." Can you say "Rolling Stone" and Emma Sulkowicz? (In case you missed it, a student journalist admitted the blatant bias in covering Sulkowicz's story at her university.)

Perhaps the most chilling recent example of the media's bias in favor of rape accusers occurred at Hofstra University where four young men were falsely accused of rape. Professor KC Johnson, the guru of the Duke Lacrosse false rape case, said that the Hofstra sexual assault claim was "equally spectacular" to the claim at Duke. It's one of the most important stories this blog has written about. Read our thorough account of what happened at Hofstra -- http://www.cotwa.info/p/lambs-to-slaughter-hofstra-false-rape.html -- and watch this chilling television news report about the alleged rape. You can decide for yourself where the problem lies with the way rape is reported.